Spencer Turner Revisited

I have recently done more research on the Turners, not enough but more. Spencer Turner was one of the first settlers in DeWitt County, arriving in Wilson Township near Waynesville just east of Logan County in 1835. His parents had moved to Illinois in 1827 living first near Athens in Menard County, then Rocky Ford in Logan County, then to Waynesville in what became to DeWitt and eventually to Wapella.

From transcribed newspaper accounts of social goings on, which I read on the DeWitt County ILGenWeb site, he apparently was not seriously damaged by being charged with murder and stiffing Abraham Lincoln. If I hadn’t read the court record I would have strongly suspected the story was not factual or heavily embellished but no, it is true.

Spencer’s stone in Sugar Grove Cemetery near Wapella does not look like that of a man who couldn’t pay his legal bill. You can see the stone here. When his widow Nancy Hoblit died in 1900 she had three lots in the town of Wapella and an 80 acre farm.